Thanks Wayne. Let me see if I understand what you are saying.

>
> You might consider omission of the discussion topic, allowing "other" to
>   be discussion.  Asking people to discuss stuff by always starting
> their subject lines with "Discussion:" or "D:" will be very difficult,
> unless there are very few discussionists.  So I would consider using..
>
> * Topics= News,Adv
> * Default-Topics= All
>

I had no intention that subscribers use D or DISCUSSION to participate in discussions.
I want them to continue to do what they have always done - just post a message with
whateever they want as the subject. I want to configure listserv such that these
messages go to all subscribers EXCEPT those for whom I have SET TOPICS: NEWS,ADV. This
latter group would ONLY get messages that **I** post with the properly formatted
subject line.

I guess I can eliminate the DISCUSSION topic altogether and set default=ALL as you
suggest to achieve this?

> When you want someone to be in your news/adv-only group, you simply
> remove "Other" as one of their topics.
>

You mean SET TOPICS: -OTHER?

> The chances of someone beginning a subject line with "News:", with
> ignorance of your topics is small, IMHO.
>
> There is, however, a good chance of someone replying to one of your
> "News:" postings using the same subject line ... and so now your
> news-only subscribers are viewing discussion!  Since you cannot
> authorize posting by topic, your only choice will be to intervene via
> moderation.
>

I can see some one posting their own ad using ADV in the subject line ;-)

However, I moderate the list, so this won't be a problem.

John